Dell PowerMax vs HPE Primera comparison

Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise are both solutions in the All-Flash Storage category. Dell Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.9, while Hewlett Packard Enterprise is ranked #11 with an average rating of 7.8. Dell Technologies holds a 4.2% mindshare in AFS, compared to Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s 3.8% mindshare. Additionally, 97% of Dell Technologies users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Hewlett Packard Enterprise users who would recommend it.

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Executive SummaryUpdated on May 18, 2025

Dell PowerMax and HPE Primera are both leading storage solutions in the enterprise data storage market. Dell PowerMax has the advantage due to its comprehensive NVMe technology and scalability, making it ideal for high-speed storage needs.

Features: Dell PowerMax offers features like advanced deduplication, high availability, and ease of management via APIs. The NVMe technology significantly enhances performance. HPE Primera provides integration with software platforms and InfoSight AI for predictive analytics, which streamline storage operations and offer comprehensive insights at no extra cost.

Room for Improvement: Dell PowerMax could improve in areas such as connectivity options, user-friendliness, and market-specific pricing strategies. HPE Primera's support processes and NAS functionalities could be refined, and its graphical interface and deduplication efficiency need enhancement.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Both Dell PowerMax and HPE Primera are primarily on-premise solutions. Dell is praised for its solid support structure despite suggestions for better remote support. HPE stands out for its rapid deployment capability but could benefit from more efficient support escalation procedures.

Pricing and ROI: Dell PowerMax, while premium-priced, provides tangible ROI through storage efficiencies and advanced features, though pricing adjustments could enhance competitiveness. HPE Primera offers an all-inclusive pricing model attractive for medium to large enterprises, promising high availability and no extra costs for additional functionalities, enhancing its cost-effectiveness.

To learn more, read our detailed Dell PowerMax vs. HPE Primera Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. HPE Primera

July 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the All-Flash Storage category, the mindshare of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is 0.9%, up from 0.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Dell PowerMax is 4.2%, up from 3.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HPE Primera is 3.8%, down from 4.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

All-Flash Storage

Featured Reviews

Jaehoon Oh

Chief Technology Officer at Lambda256

Supports efficient storage management through volume snapshots and offers reliable non-disruptive upgrades

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could be enhanced. I can see the performance statistics in the Pure Storage console, but it does not show the performance by 4K byte unit. It displays IOPS and bandwidth, but IOPS is about real use, and I want to know how many IOPS are currently running in 4K byte units. I cannot see that IOPS because most storage systems report their performance by 4K byte unit. I want to see Pure Storage performance by 4K byte unit to compare with other storage or other internal NVMe SSD.

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MayankChauhan

Lead Consultant - Cloud & Infrastructure Services at Infosys

Delivers essential support and performance for intensive operations in real-time environments

Our infrastructure is spread across the private as well as a public cloud. Our requirement was that the IOPS latency should not be more than one millisecond. If anything goes beyond one millisecond, it's a problem for us. We wanted a system that could handle the transactions and meet our latency requirements. There are performance benefits for sure. The amount of deduplication and compression offered by Dell PowerMax is quite good, especially with databases. Dell PowerMax delivers optimum performance and reliable support, integral for handling failures and ensuring operational continuity. The performance capacity optimization and support we receive from Dell are also valuable.

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Taufeeq Rauf

Head of IT at NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL FACILITATION TECHNOLOGIES (PVT.) LTD.

Offers a simple user interface and is useful for data replication

I use HPE Primera for mission-critical applications. My company uses the product as a storage solution for our machines. The availability of HPE Primera in our company is critical for us, considering that we operate in an HA environment where we can't have downtime since we need to deal with cheque clearance for banks. The product's interface is simple to use. I am satisfied with the user experience provided by the product. The ease of use of the product's interface has directly had an impact on our company's operations, along with the improvement in the availability and performance of machines. Compared to HPE Primera, I work with a much more reliable storage solution like Dell PowerStore. Compared to HPE Primera, Dell PowerStore's features related to deduplication are very good, and it also offers a physical storage capacity of eight TB, which can be expanded up to forty TB. I would recommend the product to others who plan to use it only after taking into consideration their usage and requirements. From the price and performance point of view, Dell PowerStore is a better choice. I rate the tool a seven out of ten.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"FlashArray has some fresh efficiency features. I've never seen a storage solution with a compression rating this high before. It's at least 4-to-1 on Oracle databases. It's the best flash storage for Oracle."

"The solution uses newer technology for deduplication and compression."

"It has benefited my organization because it has reduced time to insights."

"It has good, reliable, fast storage."

"The most valuable feature of this solution is its ease of use."

"It's incredibly easy to use and greatly simplified our ability to both deploy and manage our storage subsystems."

"The high availability of the product is the most valuable feature."

"Everything, especially the VMs inside, is pretty fast."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pros

"Technical support has been excellent."

"Dell PowerMax NVMe has good scalability and performance."

"The speed and the compatible interface with IBM are the most valuable features of the PowerMax product."

"We are most interested in cloud utilization."

"The SRDF site-to-site replication for the volumes is the most important feature for us. That enables us to do site recovery and replication for our VMware infrastructure."

"This platform is reliable in supporting our data availability. We now have a higher performing platform and have been able to consolidate our workloads into one single platform."

"The PowerMax software and CloudIQ let us get an inside view of our compression and compaction, as well as our usage of the storage."

"Technical support for Dell PowerMax NVMe is good, and I am satisfied with the assistance provided."

More Dell PowerMax pros

"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."

"The most valuable feature is an all-flash system, which means the data access speed is amazing while the latency is almost nothing, and it can deliver IOPS up to 16,000."

"For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product."

"The most valuable feature is the ability to provide the IOPS ratio which is required by a lot of our customers."

"HPE Primera has good integration. All the users are using HP servers and some systems, such as Synergy, which integrate well into the solution."

"HPE Primera is an all-flash storage product that's very stable and has a higher storage capacity. It can also give better ROI compared to NetApp."

"The initial setup is simple."

"Our customers have given very positive feedback about InfoSign, which is the management software for this solution."

More HPE Primera pros

Cons

"Right now, the box itself is just strictly working as a backend storage system. It would be fantastic if we could access it directly like a NAS device through network access or SIS drives. I think they have an interface, but I am not sure how good it is. If we could address a box directly on the network without having to go through a server, it would be great. The replication schemas could be improved. We are not using replication on the storage level right now. We use a different type of replication. If their replication would be as good as the one that we have, I would probably run the replication schema because it might be faster, but I don't know that for a fact. So, I cannot say that they have good replication. All I can say is that they need to inform us better."

"It is on the expensive side."

"It feels more suitable for small and medium-sized businesses rather than enterprises."

"Adding some functions to the product would be beneficial."

"The tool's portfolio is minimal. It is expensive."

"In terms of what needs improvement, the dashboard and management could be simplified."

"I'd like to see the product implement active replication for vehicles such as VMware."

"There are some challenges with data encryption and reduction."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe cons

"The REST API needs improvement. We are a very big automation company, and this would be big for us."

"There are quite a few design areas where I have been trying to understand why it has been designed in certain ways. This includes redundancy at the engine level, the virtual engines, or the directors that are installed. It is also related to how the cache destaging happens, or how it's designed, and how read and write caches are designed. These are design areas where I think they can do better."

"I would like the scalability to improve, as it requires additional footprints."

"One area for improvement is its user-friendliness, as it's a bit engineer-oriented. Specific knowledge and expertise are required to manage it properly, which some users might find a bit challenging."

"The disadvantage of PowerMax is its cost."

"I would also like to see a real-time, graphical view of metrics. I don't know how far back in time we can look, but if we could see the performance from two months or three months back, and how it is performing now, that would be helpful."

"Remove the need for physical or hardwired virtual servers to run consistency groups, instead make the expensive array controllers handle that."

More Dell PowerMax cons

"This solution would be expensive for small business and it could be priced more competitively for that market."

"There are certain shortcomings in the technical support offered by HPE where improvements are required."

"The IOPS and throughput could be better. That's the only drawback compared to other vendors."

"HPE Primera's deduplication area is not as good as the one offered by Dell PowerStore, making it an area where improvements are required."

"Only HPE can manage the product."

"Primera should be more user-friendly."

"HPE Primera is not good enough as a storage solution as it does not provide a good NAS storage."

"We have not had a good experience with support from HPE Primera. They can improve."

More HPE Primera cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The tool is an investment that we've budgeted for. While the prices may be higher than those of other vendors, we see it as a market leader with benefits. We don't regret purchasing it."

"Given its price, Pure is not the first option."

"Its price could be better. It is not too expensive, but it is the high-end cost. It is kind of a Rolls-Royce. You pay a lot, but you get a lot out of it. So, the price pressure on the way down would be great, but at the end of the day, if you need to do the work, you just pay for it."

"As far as the licensing costs, everything is included in the license."

"The product is expensive."

"With Pure Storage, we would like to continue seeing price reductions with flash storage. I don't think we're any different than anybody else when we continue to look to the industry for price reductions of both NVMe and traditional SSD storage. We would like to see these prices continue to decline and erode, even displacing large spinning disks."

"With VMware, we pay $300,000 annually."

"Pretty much everything that you need is licensed when you buy the product. Licensing to me is different than the maintenance cost, but they can bleed into one another. We buy the product, and we expect three years of support bundled into what we negotiate on our storage arrays. I would start to see maintenance costs going into the fourth year, but we're not there yet."

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe pricing and cost advice

"The price is okay."

"I rate Dell PowerMax NVMe a five out of ten for pricing."

"From reclaiming data center space which is so tightly constrained these days, it will pay for itself in a short amount of time, which is fantastic. Anything we can do to get more out of our current physical data center space helps us a ton, and PowerMax has helped enable that."

"The pricing is competitive. I would rate the pricing of the solution a six out of ten."

"The cost is expensive. While VMAX now has good pricing, PowerMax is a little expensive."

"Since Dell PowerMax NVMe is an enterprise storage, its price is premium."

"In terms of price-performance, it beat out other competitors when we were taking a look and comparing it to the market. That was one of the biggest driving points for us."

"I think it is an expensive tool, but it is the best product. I think it is expensive and the cost one must pay for the best solution."

More Dell PowerMax pricing and cost advice

"The price of HPE Primera could improve, it is expensive."

"The product is expensive."

"The solution is quite cost-effective."

"The solution’s pricing is affordable and worth the money."

"I rate the product price a seven on a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive."

"Because it has high availability, the cost is above average. The cost depends upon the sizing, and every customer has a different size. It is slightly above average in terms of cost compared to its competitors, but the value add was that they could know what their maintenance cost was going to be going forward. They knew what their renewal or expansion costs would be."

"The tool is expensive. I can say that HPE Primera is one of the costliest tools in the market."

"There is only a one-time license purchase needed and no additional costs. If HP could reduce the training cost, then that would be advantageous to the seller."

More HPE Primera pricing and cost advice

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Computer Software Company

14%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

10%

Government

Computer Software Company

16%

Manufacturing Company

13%

Financial Services Firm

10%

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

Pure FlashArray X NVMe helps to improve our processing speed. It is user-friendly and easy to use.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

The price of Pure FlashArray X NVMe is very expensive, though I do not know the actual price because I am using the E...

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What needs improvement with Pure FlashArray X NVMe?

I have no specific improvements to suggest for Pure FlashArray X NVMe at this time. The performance statistics could ...

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What's the difference between DELL EMC Powerstore and Powermax NVMe?

Dell PowerStore is an all-solid-state midrange storage system. It has many internal elements taken from other Dell of...

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What do you like most about Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

First, it's an enterprise storage solution. This is very important for us. Another important feature is replication.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Dell EMC PowerMax NVMe?

When comparing Dell PowerMax NVMe with other vendors, such as IBM enterprise solutions, the price is relatively higher.

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Which would you choose - HPE Nimble Storage or HPE Primera?

HPE Nimble is a versatile synced WAN San solution. It is easy to use and doesn’t require much training for admins. Th...

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What's the difference between HPE 3PAR StoreServ and HPE Primera?

HPE Primera has many great features but one of the best is that it is very easy to deploy. From an overall perspectiv...

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What do you like most about HPE Primera?

For over a year, I have not seen any downtime in the product.

See all answers

Comparisons

Dell PowerStore vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 25% of the time

TrueNAS R-Series vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 17% of the time

Pure Storage FlashBlade vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 13% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Pure FlashArray X NVMe

Compared 9% of the time

More Pure FlashArray X NVMe Competitors

Dell PowerStore vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 25% of the time

HPE Alletra Storage vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 12% of the time

Dell VMAX All Flash vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 10% of the time

IBM FlashSystem vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 9% of the time

Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI) vs Dell PowerMax

Compared 2% of the time

More Dell PowerMax Competitors

HPE Alletra Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 35% of the time

HPE 3PAR StoreServ vs HPE Primera

Compared 22% of the time

HPE Nimble Storage vs HPE Primera

Compared 9% of the time

Dell PowerStore vs HPE Primera

Compared 7% of the time

HPE StoreOnce vs HPE Primera

Compared 3% of the time

More HPE Primera Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Pure FlashArray X NVMe

August 2025

Download Pure FlashArray X NVMe product report

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax

August 2025

Download Dell PowerMax product report

Buyer's Guide

HPE Primera

August 2025

Download HPE Primera product report

Also Known As

Pure FlashArray//X NVMe, Pure FlashArray//X, FlashArray//X

Dell PowerMax NVMe, Dell EMC PowerMax, PowerMax

Primera

Overview

Pure Storage FlashArray//X is the world’s first enterprise-class, all-NVMe flash storage array. It represents a new class of storage – shared accelerated storage, which is a term coined by Gartner – that delivers major breakthroughs in performance, simplicity, and consolidation.

Pure Storage

Dell PowerMax offers robust performance, reliability, and efficient data handling. It is recognized for its compression, deduplication, and NVMe technology, significantly benefiting data centers with its advanced replication and uptime.

PowerMax is equipped to handle mission-critical applications, providing impressive performance metrics with low latency and high IOPS capacity. Its CloudIQ and Unisphere interfaces enhance manageability, while REST API support simplifies storage management. Users in sectors like healthcare, finance, and telecommunications leverage its capabilities for database management, high-transaction block storage, and disaster recovery. However, opportunities for improving deduplication efficiency, interface complexity, and automation remain.

What are the key features of Dell PowerMax?

Data Reduction: Combines compression and deduplication for efficient storage use.
NVMe Technology: Enables swift data handling with high throughput.
CloudIQ and Unisphere: Streamlines manageability and control.
REST API Support: Simplifies integration with management tools.
High Availability: Ensures consistent uptime across platforms.

What benefits should users look for in reviews?

Performance Metrics: Look for low latency and high IOPS as indicators.
Reliability: Consistent operations with minimal interruptions.
Manageability: Efficient control over storage environments.
Cost Efficiency: Note any potential savings in data processing and storage.

Industries utilize Dell PowerMax to support diverse environments like VMware, Oracle, and PostgreSQL. It serves multiple sectors such as healthcare, finance, and government, aiding in data storage consolidation, disaster recovery, and high-availability hosting for critical systems and applications.

Dell Technologies

HPE introduces HPE Primera, a new storage platform designed to deliver superior simplicity, availability, and performance for mission-critical applications
HPE Primera advances the HPE Intelligent Data Platform, a portfolio of products and solutions designed to help customers transition from delivering storage to unlocking business value with intelligent data

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

Sample Customers

Fremont Bank, Judson ISD, The Nielsen Company

Rackspace, Open Line

Information Not Available

Buyer's Guide

Dell PowerMax vs. HPE Primera

July 2025

Free Report: Dell PowerMax vs. HPE Primera

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